Children Go to School

The schoolchild was the main object of research for Italian scholars of childhood. The reason was institutional and political, as well as scientific. After the Unification of Italy, the school was the institution to which the Italian state entrusted the task of training future citizens. From the school, the ruling class expected an improvement in the general conditions of the country, since schooling (especially elementary schooling) was the only institution that could reach broad segments of the population, geographically and socially. At the same time, the modernisation of the school system (similar to what was happening in the rest of Europe and in North America, by introducing syllabi, examinations, and subdivisions of the school population into classes) required an understanding of the school population in order to sort it into groups and levels based on rational criteria.